Alabama education officials and others support the standards and, more importantly, should be the folks developing education policy. The last thing the Legislature should be doing is ordering education changes for the state. Our elected state Board of Education is responsible for that.

State and local school boards, education officials, the state's top teachers and business leaders support Common Core. People from the far, far right such as state Sen. Scott Beason, R-Gardendale, and Elois Zeanah, president of the Alabama Federation of Republican Women, oppose Common Core.

Which side has more credibility? There's no contest.

And in the few other states that are pushing back on Common Core, it's the far, far right leading the effort there, too. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has solid Republican credentials and is a champion of the standards, which resulted from an initiative by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

The effort to roll back Common Core in Michigan is opposed there by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder. In all, 45 states, along with the District of Columbia, four U.S.
territories and the Department of Defense Education Activity, have
adopted the standards. In Alabama, they're called the College- & Career-Ready standards.

The idea is this set of learning standards will help students become college and career ready by the time they finish high school. A kid from Alabama should be able to compete for a job or admission to a college in any other Common Core state.

The key, as always, is implementation and, most importantly, the classroom teacher. That's where we should look as well for guidance. And in Alabama, the state's top teachers are behind Common Core. That is generally the case elsewhere, too.

Alabama has never ranked very high in educational achievement, so we should welcome any opportunity to step it up.

Let the teachers teach and the students learn -- and let's keep the politics and weird conspiracy theories out of the classroom.

Joey Kennedy, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, is a community engagement specialist for AL.com and The Birmingham News. Reach him at jkennedy@al.com.